There’s no place like home — or, if you’re the world’s most-beloved sequined shoes, a state-of-the-art, temperature-controlled display case.

More than 5,000 people from around the world recently came together to help save some legendary footwear from deteriorating: the ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland, aka Dorothy, in the 1939 classic “The Wizard of Oz.”

Donors from the U.S. and dozens other countries pitched in to help the Smithsonian Institution’s #KeepthemRuby Kickstarter campaign reach its $300,000 goal in just seven days. “I’m not American, but they mean a lot to me” wrote a backer named Ning, one of several who wrote about how the movie had touched or inspired them.

That success got the campaign an extension, with a new goal of $85,000 to conserve the “Scarecrow” costume worn by Ray Bolger. (Bolger’s widow donated the costume to the Smithsonian in 1987, but it’s so fragile that it’s rarely on display.) Just over $44,000 has been raised toward that goal.

National Museum of American History

You can save Scarecrow, too.

“We thought that the crowdsourcing platform was so good for this,” said Ryan Lintelman, entertainment curator at the National Museum of American History in Washington, where the slippers have been on continuous display for almost three decades. “It’s our way to say these belong to the American public.”

These immortal shoes weren’t expected to last

The Smithsonian isn’t new to crowdsourcing. Lintelman’s museum was inspired by a similar effort more than a year ago by the Air and Space Museum, where a “Reboot the Suit” campaign raised over $700,000 in August 2015 to conserve Neil Armstrong’s Apollo 11 spacesuit. With that success as an example, he said, his museum figured testing whether the public would rally around an iconic piece of cinematic history was worth a try.

As much as 70% of the Smithsonian’s annual budget is government-funded, said Lintelman, but it uses outside money for special projects and exhibitions, and often seeks corporate or individual donors to fund restoration projects. (Ralph Lauren, for example, donated $10 million to a 1998 campaign to conserve the American flag that inspired Francis Scott Key to write “The Star-Spangled Banner” in 1812.)

No one knows for sure how many pairs of slippers — designed by MGM Studio’s then-chief costume designer Gilbert Adrian — were made for “The Wizard of Oz.” (According to Rhys Thomas, author of the 1989 book “The Ruby Slippers of Oz,” there were as few as four or as many as seven.) But they weren’t expected to last, according to Lintelman, therefore the construction wasn’t top notch.

Everett Collection

When Judy Garland wore them in 1939

“The idea was to make several pairs, so no one gave any thought to them lasting longer than the few months it took to film ‘The Wizard of Oz,’” Lintelman said.

From 1939 until 1970, the shoes gathered dust, emerging to be sold at auction. (Only one pair was meant to be preserved, but several were spirited away and sold.)

Other pairs have sold for $165,000 to $666,000, many times the $15,000 the museum’s pair sold for. One of the last known sales was to The Academy, for an undisclosed price, after the shoes failed to reach a $2 million auction reserve. (Worth a read: The 1988 Los Angeles Times article about the history of the shoes, which also got their own documentary, “The Slippers,” earlier this year.)

Today, the Smithsonian’s slippers — on display since 1979 — are barely recognizable from their glory days. It’s hard to believe two witches would have died trying to obtain them.

“I saw these ruby slippers a week ago and noticed that they are starting to look so old compared to when I first saw them 20 years ago,” wrote donor Erin Landweber on Kickstarter.

Instead of a glittering red, the shoes are turning dark, not unlike the Wicked Witch’s terrorific crystal ball. Photographs show how some of the sequins are barely held together. The heels are worn, and the bottoms reveal a decaying felt sole.

Despite the wear and tear, though, the shoes appear to be a special set. Lintelman said a visiting filmmaker studied them, learning that they were a size 5 — Garland’s size.

“It has the features that lead us to believe it was worn when she was dancing on the yellow brick road,” Lintelman said. “There’s felt on the soles of the shoes that was supposed to deaden the sound of her walking. The damages are consistent with dancing, there’s scuffing and sequins are missing.”

While it isn’t certain that the shoes were Garland’s — or even worn by her — it’s certainly possible, agrees Thomas.

‘The right pair of shoes can change your life’

Soon after the museum got the shoes, they were put to work, becoming one of its most popular publicly viewable artifacts.

“They’re among the few objects that have been on continuous display in our museum,” said Lintelman. “Their enemies are light, humidity, temperature fluctuations. Being on constant display starts to deteriorate the materials.”

The gallery’s own ambient light has been most damaging, according to Lintelman. He said the Kickstarter funds will help perform an analysis of the shoes’ 12 different material types — including leather, glass and silk — to determine which environmental conditions each need.

Smithsonian

The shoes have been on display since 1979.

He hopes they can come up with a “state-of-the-art-case” that will preserve them for years to come.

The shoes need an inch-by-inch cleaning of each tiny sequin, said Lintelman, noting that the museum was told the dye in those sequins could be actually changing the shoes’ tone. (If that procedure sounds maniacally detailed, recall that part of The Star-Spangled Banner’s conservation involved unpicking a million stitches.)

While the museum wants to restore the shoes to some of their former luster, Lintelman said, the main purpose of the project is cleaning and stabilization. The ultimate goal: to have them ready to show at an exhibition focusing on American history and popular culture scheduled for 2018 that will also include items from the “Mad Men” set and Archie Bunker’s chair.

Nanci Lien, a 58-year old Seattle native, told MarketWatch it was a thrill to donate to the slippers’ cause. She calls herself a lifelong “Wizard of Oz” fan, says she has worked it into presentations, and lives by two maxims inspired by the movie: “You should always have at least three really good friends” and “The right pair of shoes can change your life.”

This story was first published on Nov. 3, 2016. It has been republished to clarify statements regarding what’s known about the slippers used in “The Wizard of Oz” generally and the Smithsonian’s pair specifically. It also corrects a statement about the highest known price paid for a pair of the slippers at auction.

Barbara
Kollmeyer

Barbara Kollmeyer is an editor for MarketWatch in Madrid. Follow her on Twitter @bkollmeyer.

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